The Paying Guests(57)
Lilian was gazing at her, appalled. ‘But what about your friend?’
‘Oh —’ Frances looked away. ‘Well, it was hard when we parted. It was – It was worse than hard. But Christina did all right in the end. She got out of the suburbs, just as she meant to. You’d never know, meeting her now, that she’d grown up in a street called Hilldrop Villas.’
‘Did she marry?’
‘Marry? No! At any rate, not in the way you mean. She found another friend. Or, the friend found her. Someone braver than me – or harder-hearted, anyhow. She broke with her family years ago, and does just fine without them. A schoolmistress, as it happens. Well, she calls herself an artist. She has a studio in Pimlico and makes lumpy cups and saucers.’ She caught Lilian’s eye. ‘Do I sound sour about it? I suppose I am a little sour. It isn’t always easy, visiting Christina, looking at the life she has and thinking that it was meant to be mine. I would be with her today if I weren’t feeling so rotten. What’s the time?’ She looked for the clock. ‘Yes, I’d be there right now.’ She turned her face to the open window and called lightly: ‘Sorry, Chrissy!’ Turning back, she spoke with a yawn. ‘At least I won’t have put her to any trouble. She’s the untidiest person I know.’
Lilian’s face had remained colourless, all this time. Now, surprisingly, she blushed. In a flat voice, she said, ‘You still care about her.’
‘What? No, no. Not like that. That’s all finished with, years ago.’
‘But you said you were in love.’
‘I was,’ said Frances. ‘We were. But Christina has her Stevie now, and I had the love wrung out of me. Or – what is it they do with vampires? Shove cricket stumps through their hearts? Yes, I was well and truly stumped.’ She sighed, and rubbed her eyes. She felt exhausted, emptied out. ‘And none of it should matter, Lilian. With the world in the state it is, it’s such a small, small thing. But I think the sad fact is that I’m about as happy in my life as you are in yours. I do my best for my mother – or, I tell myself that I do. Sometimes I seem to do nothing but scold her; we cross each other like a pair of scissors. She isn’t happy, either. How could she be? I think she’s simply marking time. Well, perhaps we all are.’
For a while, then, they were silent, Frances sighing again, Lilian still blushing, sitting with her head lowered, frowning into her lap. She was rubbing at a wrinkle in the fabric of her skirt, going over and over the crease with her thumb in a fretful, preoccupied way.
And soon the silence had gone on so long that Frances began to be afraid that, after all, she had spoken too frankly. She said, ‘You won’t mention Christina’s name in front of my mother, will you? She doesn’t know that Chrissy and I still see each other. She’d have an absolute fit if she did. And – And you won’t tell Leonard? You haven’t told him already?’
That made Lilian look back at her. ‘Of course I haven’t told Leonard.’
‘Well, I don’t know how these things work. I always supposed that husbands and wives told each other everything.’
Lilian didn’t answer that. She still looked preoccupied, burdened. And after another minute of silence she passed a hand across her face and said, in the same flat way as before, ‘I ought to go, Frances. I’ve things to do, before Len gets back.’
Frances nodded. ‘Yes, of course.’ But she looked on in dismay as Lilian got down from the bed. Watching her straightening the seams of her skirt, she said, ‘Thank you for coming in. I’m so very sorry to know about your baby. But I’m glad you told me. Thanks for talking so honestly. And thank you for listening to all that – all that vampire business.’
Again Lilian said nothing, simply stood looking back at her through the gloom. Then, with an awkward bob of her head, she turned away, towards the door.
But then she paused, as if thinking something over. And, unexpectedly, she turned back. Blushing harder than ever, she came to the head of the bed, stopping just a foot or so away from where Frances was sitting; and she put out a hand towards Frances’s bosom. She didn’t touch the bosom itself. Instead, while Frances watched, transfixed, bewildered, she curled her fingers as if taking hold of something that lay jutting out of Frances’s breast, and, making a creaking, hissing sound with her mouth, she slowly pulled her hand back.
Only when the little charade was nearly complete did Frances understand what it was all about. The spot at which Lilian had been grasping lay just above her heart. She had been drawing an imaginary stake from it.
She did it without once meeting Frances’s gaze; but she did it smoothly, deliberately – even casting the stake aside afterwards with a graceful unclosing of her hand. But then she stood as if startled by the implications of what she had done. Her own heart was thudding: Frances could see it, a drum-skin quiver at the base of her throat. They looked at each other in silence, and the moment seemed to swell, to be suspended, like a drop of water, like a tear… Then the curtains billowed and rattled, and that made her start back into life. She put down her head and stepped away, left the room and closed the door behind her.
Why had she done it? What had she meant? Frances sank against her pillows, listening in wonder to the fading of her footsteps. Placing a hand on her bosom, she found that the spot through which the imaginary stake had passed was slightly tender. She pulled down the collar of her blouse, moved aside the limp camisole beneath it; she even got up and crossed the room, to look at her breast in the glass. There was nothing to see, the flesh was unbroken, unmarked. It was impossible, after all… But she returned to the bed, lay with her fingers over her heart, convinced that she could feel a stir of heat, a glow of blood – something, anyhow, that had been brought to the surface by Lilian’s hand.